The rousing high-school-football documentary
Undefeated won an Oscar, and it’s easy to see why.

A come-from-behind tale of hardscrabble teens and the men who believe in them, this stirring
portrait of compassion and grit follows the classic contours of similar stories that have come
before it, while delivering emotional wallops all its own.

Undefeated follows a year in the life of the Manassas Tigers, the football team of a high
school in impoverished North Memphis, Tenn. Financially under-resourced, psychologically whipped
and physically battered after renting themselves out as a practice opponent for richer teams, the
Tigers begin the 2009-10 season with only one advantage: coach Bill Courtney, the prosperous owner
of a lumber company who, for the past several years, has volunteered to whip the Tigers into
fighting trim — and maybe change a few young men’s lives along the way.

As filmmakers Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin follow every practice, game, pep talk and
dressing-down, they narrow their focus to three players: a small, overachieving offensive lineman
named Montrail, or “Money”; a hulking hothead named Chavis, whom we meet as he’s getting out of a
juvenile penitentiary; and O.C., a gentle giant of a left tackle whose poor grades threaten to
disqualify him from receiving the college scholarships he needs to get out of North Memphis.

And make no mistake: Getting out of North Memphis is the overriding goal of the poor
African-American students whose survival strategies in their blighted neighborhood seem limited to
snarling aggression or self-deceptive striving. Enter Courtney, who motivates his charges with
equal parts tough love and surrogate-parental outrage, peppering his come-to-Jesus speeches with
occasional well-placed profanities.

“People always say that football builds character, which it does not,” he explains early in the
film. “Football reveals character.”

Courtney’s words come true in
Undefeated, which unfolds with such drama and high emotional stakes that it sometimes
evokes a big-time Hollywood movie. When O.C. moves in with Courtney’s assistant coach to be tutored
in math — temporarily trading the tiny house he shares with his grandmother for a huge home in
manicured East Memphis — it brings to mind
The Blind Side (2009). (Both coaches are white; all of their players are
African-American.)

For his part, Courtney evokes the great coaches of pop culture’s past, from
Varsity Blues to
Friday Night Lights.

It turns out that Courtney’s players aren’t the only ones grappling with profound loss in
Undefeated, which skillfully threads viewers through the Tigers’ amazing season as it
leads its protagonists to their crucial year-end decisions.